Sometimes, in a rare and surreptitious confluence, what’s good for global economies is also good for women. Generally, capitalist practices put profits over human rights, but as economies are interconnected and the global workforce expands and changes there can even be an economic argument to be made in support of human rights.

“Investing in the health of women and girls is the right thing to do and the smart thing to do for national economies and global stability. The business community can help. Your partnership is crucial in preventing unnecessary suffering for women and girls everywhere… Last year, more than 300,000 women died giving birth. The vast majority of those deaths could have been prevented.”

Mr. Ban spoke during the Davos Economic Forum, which is a time when world economic leaders get together at a Swiss ski resort and confer about the state of the world economy. As it turns out, the mood at Davos this year was somber, given the state of many world economies. Notably, a topic at this year’s forum was the ever-expanding income inequality in the global economy and the growing gap between the world’s rich and poor. Also notably, there was an entire session at Davos called “Women as the Way Forward.”

This argument, asserting the importance of investing in women, is being made far and wide. As exemplified by Nike’s Girl Effect campaign, there is clearly an argument to be made about the importance of investing in girls and women as a social strategy. It is indeed inarguably important to increase access to health care and education for girls. But there are also some troubling, and vaguely articulated assumptions at the base of this argument for investing in women as economic strategy.

First, there’s a bit of uncritical gender essentialism at play here. Somehow, investing in women is investing in us all because women are inherently more caring and nurturing. Instead of reinforcing the notions of women’s work and men’s work, we might want to invest in dismantling gender essentialism. Second, global poverty is deeply structural. It is predicated upon centuries of colonialism and inequity between countries in the global North and South. To lay, even rhetorically, the burden of pulling nations out of poverty upon women workers is ahistorical at best and disingenuous at worst. And while we’re on the topic of disingenuous arguments, I take issue with the idea of investing in women for the sake of the global economy and not simply for the sake of the women themselves. Finally, it has not escaped my attention that many of the biggest and best funded efforts to change the lives of the girls in the global south come from the industrialized West.

All this lead us, finally, to the big question: is all this it resulting in tangible change for the world’s women? It’s a complicated answer, as it turns out. Yes and no. But this much is true: we’re moving far too slowly.

Last week, Monica Potts wrote a piece in The New Republic initially entitled “Trans Activism is Threatening Women’s Colleges’ Mission: Campus fights to erase references to women are indistinguishable from old-school misogyny” and then, after lots of pushback, changed to: “Why Women’s Colleges Still Matter in the Age of Transactivism.”

Regardless of the new headline, the piece does indeed argue that trans activism is threatening the mission of women’s colleges. The sum total of the evidence amassed to support this assertion is theNew York Times Magazine article from last year about trans men at Wellesley demanding recognition and the fact that students at Mount Holyoke cancelled a production of The Vagina Monologues last month, deciding that it ...

Last week, Monica Potts wrote a piece in The New Republic initially entitled “Trans Activism is Threatening Women’s Colleges’ Mission: Campus fights to erase references to women are indistinguishable from old-school misogyny” and then, after lots ...

A Northeastern University professor has created an interactive chart that reveals the gendered biases in students’ evaluations of their profs on RateMyProfessors.com. You can input any word — like, say, “genius” or “bossy” — and see how often it’s used by gender and academic department.

To continue with those examples, take a wild guess about how those two words broke down. Here are the results for “genius”:

And for “bossy”:

As the The Upshot sums up: “Men are more likely to be described as a star, knowledgeable, awesome or the best professor. Women are more likely to be described as bossy, disorganized, helpful, annoying or as playing favorites. Nice or rude are also more often used to describe women than men.” I’m sure if you spend ...

A Northeastern University professor has created an interactive chart that reveals the gendered biases in students’ evaluations of their profs on RateMyProfessors.com. You can input any word — like, say, “genius” or “bossy” — and see how often it’s ...

As the national conversation around police violence continues in the aftermath of Ferguson, we need to be talking about men and masculinity. Because there are not many female cops shooting. Nor many women being shot.

Over 90 percent of all homicides in America are committed by men. And, when it comes to police who commit homicide, it turns out that the gender imbalance is even more profound. It seems that it isn’t just cops who are killing the Michael Browns and Eric Garners of America. It is male cops.

At first, this seems unsurprising, given that only 11.4 percent of all police officers in the US are female. But, on this basis, female ...

Ed. note: This post was originally published on the Community site.

As the national conversation around police violence continues in the aftermath of Ferguson, we need to be talking about men and masculinity. Because there are not many ...